Of Writing.

What we write is never the truth even if the intention has been honest. What we write is about recollecting the past (even when we think we write about the future) and the past is that which is lost forever. All we can do is replace that which is lost. But this should not deter us from the practice. In fact it should encourage us. What we write is the creation of a new object. That object will be far from truth because the truth is unavailable. We cannot claim it neither can we understand it. We are incapable. This incapability might be defeating to some and to some, empowering. I speak to and for the latter. What we write creates meaning in a world where meaning is elusive. What we write is a boat we make to not only save ourselves from drowning or keep afloat but it is also a means of travel. What we write is the creation of our journeys. And then depending on the intention, the magnitude and quality of it, we can rewrite that boat to make it a ship or a plane. Or we can simply choose to sprout wings. And then when one is tired of movement, one can write a paragraph, a story or a great book about rest, to find rest. Writing is about creating illusions. And in a world where absolute meaning, absolute knowledge is denied even to the gods, illusions are more real.

Of Generosity.

At office. No one from my department has come except me. I do like the solitude that is the consequence of their absence and yet I feel this is all unfair. I feel I would like to be home or somewhere else. But then, I'm plagued by the thought of having nothing to do there. And yet, I do not feel I have done anything worthwhile today.

I am completely broke, 'am penniless. I don't even have money to buy lunch and to avoid any embarrassment, I tell my friends that I do not wish to order. Hunger gnaws at the insides of my stomach. S offered me his lunch this afternoon - rice, cooked in butter and carefully chosen spices. The smell of it wafted with such allurement that I could not refuse. And with gratitude I ate.

When he offered to share his lunch with me, I was suddenly overcome with embarrassment. S pitied me - of course, not with condescension but with genuine concern. Although one would have to brush off the almost nonchalant gesture with which he offered, to see that concern. Yes, I was embarrassed and I wanted to refuse like a once-sufficient man whose pride has been hurt by such goodwill and genuine compassion. And yet, a part of me was overwhelmed by this generosity and kindness. And I, at once, felt myself melt in the warmth of such an offering. And that part of me came forward and gladly accepted the offer to share the meal. My body overcame my mind.

Such small, unexpected happiness makes it all worthwhile - it makes life that much easier. These are things we don't remember at the end of our years but it is only these things that bring us to the end of our years. They move us and give us hope to go on further. They give us the strength to overcome great sadness and the courage to say, "It's alright".

But I must be careful - I must consider such moments of generosity and goodwill as sources of energy which refuel me and not make the mistake of seeking complete refuge in them. Else, I will only long for such moments in complete passivity and spend my life in waiting.

...

He entered with sun laden hair, this creature, a god perhaps from a distant mythology to change mine. He entered like a golden spear of the golden sun piercing the bark of my skin to reveal a warm softness, once familiar. And I strained my eyes to defend myself against this luminous happening to take it slowly step by step. Light by light. And this constriction etched on my pale face, this tremor on my ageing stillness, he understood it as contemplation contemplating surrender. Although it was cumbersome, this alien light in my anesthetic dark, his charm was such that I was a moth given wings whose flight is meaningful only when death is certain in the scorching blindness of a flame. He entered with his stories to fill the hollow of my solitude to reveal my indigence concealed in the dark. He lived by me borrowing my sceptre, ruling the vacuous longing of my beings. He walked about lifting grains of sand, long settled, and when he wished plunged into the stillness of my lake that had not know a ripple since I can remember And with his body, sculpted with an old man's hands and years, he raised storms from its depths.

But upon the third waning of the moon, the great silver bird roared in the heavens beckoning his return. And he left. How could I, a creature of the dark, love the light? And yet I did, allowing him to enter the mouth of my cave, allowing him to plunder my quiet.

And now even solitude is unfamiliar.

In the depths of the lake, he came to give birth to a monster that now surfaces from the waters in search of its father. It escapes into the light, but it is a monster. Its home is in the dark with me. And so, the creatures of light will hunt him down and I shall be in mourning.

resilience through art

A girl, with an infectious vivacity and a demeanour that makes others happy, walks to and fro on the streets of Connaught Place, just outside People Tree. I meet her, Pankhuri, the one behind the T-shirt movement. And I am quickly taken in by her enthusiasm, her abundant willingness to ‘share’, by her generosity. (She even bought me an iced tea!) We sit inside a neighbouring café, and over sips of coffee she talks about her ‘resilience through art’.

Pankhuri recently came back from a trip to Leh, where she had conducted four workshops with the children in the relief camps and with little monks from a neighbouring monastery. She had had to postpone all her arrangements due to the devastating cloud burst in the region. Earlier, she had planned to work in other places, but then she could not avoid working in the relief camps. But, she tells me, it was an 'enriching' experience. She takes out her laptop and shows me some pictures of the children and their own little t-shirt paintings while narrating the stories behind them. She tells me about one such story with genuine amazement, “This little boy drew a dragon on his T-shirt. I asked him why he did so and he said that a dragon had taken away his house. And then he made a house on the back of the dragon.”

 

Although she largely works with children, her T-shirt painting exercises are not only restricted to children. She has worked with adults too. She says, with a hint of mischief, “I actually work with the child within each one of us”. And one will understand how if one meets her. Her carefree, comforting presence and her charming ‘Peace and Trees’, when she signs out, would put anyone at ease. She has been painting T-shirts and conducting the ‘resilience through art’ workshops for the last two years, at various schools and colleges, in parks, in the Trimurti Bhavan, etc. And she does this mostly on her own. “I usually create my own projects. But sometimes I work with different groups and NGOs. If anything seems interesting, I do it. Or else, I am constantly thinking about new and different ideas and projects I could build on.”

She tells me about an upcoming exhibition. And I can sense her excitement although she hasn’t decided on the dates and the venue (she does say that she’ll probably put up the works hanging on a tree) as she is at present busy participating in a theatre workshop because “I need to learn more. I don’t want to stay in one place, you know. I don’t want to limit myself with just one thing. So I keep on learning… I learn and then I share. I learn and I share.”

Pankhuri in Leh, after the cloud burst

I ask her to talk about that one special T-shirt she painted. After much hesitation to talk just about one because it would mean that she would have to choose from so many, she did tell me about this T-shirt currently available at People Tree. “It’s basically based on the principles of Abdul Gaffar Khan, peace-leader from Afghanistan. His main principles were faith, right conduct and love. And he created an army of non-violent people, called the Khudai Khidmatgar. So I made this T-shirt based on my imagination of what a Khudai Khidmatgar would wear. And it’s become one of my favourites.” And when I asked if anyone had bought it, she laughed and said, “Well people try it and take photographs of it, but they don’t buy it. I think because it’s expensive in the shop which is selling it.” After a thoughtful pause, she says, “Maybe, it’ just meant to be there.”

By profession, Pankhuri is a wildlife expert. However, slowly, she chooses to move more towards art. And she has found her own way to mix art and ecology. Her T-shirt paintings and her workshops all carry simple messages of “honesty, humility and inter-connectedness.” Apart from painting on T-shirts, she also does jewellery, journals and diaries. In her blog, she says that she uses “natural, used, discarded, forgotten, everyday materials to fashion them into attractive, honest and unique pieces. After all, the laws of nature have been made to be respected, so I take only what I really need.” 

rain

                                                                                                   - 2008

untitled

in that quiet 
the lotus raises its head 
to see the filth surround its velvet hem; 

crowned 
she is now a queen 
beautiful, loved and frightening - 
a monster that feeds on filth 
to sustain her delicate white, 

soft petals 
conceal wanton organs 
awaiting the sting of a lost insect 

drunk 
with lingering scent 
poisonous, pure and perfumed, 
scent of juice for quenching thirst 
of the insect – tired, searching, 

slimy frog 
squats on the velvet hem 
awaiting the insect lured by the bait. 
                                                 -2008

and on and on and on...and?

Why does one choose to become an artist? What intention motivates him? What does he want to portray with or through art? Does he want to show Art or something else through the medium of Art? Then is Art only medium or is it an end?

It is always someone portraying something through Art. Is Art then nothing more than an instrument? A pair of glasses to show things better? A telescope or a microscope of sorts? Or does the subject portrayed get marginalised in the larger construct of Art? Do the subjects then become instruments and tools for Art? Or is it a symbiotic existence? Does then an expression like, 'Art for Art's sake,' make sense?

In an art gallery, for example, what is then shown to us? Is it an exhibition of Art itself or of consciousness through Art? But I see I am digging deeper here (to a point of digression?). The relationship between Art and its subject is further problematised by consciousness. What is consciousness made up of? The consciousness of the 'artist'? Of course, the subject is ubiquitous in the artist's consciousness. Van Gogh's chairs are focal points in his consciousness and as a consequence in his paintings. They become a part of him to such an extent that the chairs become almost portraits of the artist himself and/or of his absence. Three completely different entities converge to become one whole making it impossible to separate the artist, the subject and the Art. A triangular relationship is realised between the three. Of course, to place one thing on top and the other two at the base would be erroneous. A hierarchical division would collapse the whole project.

The first sentence... no, the first word.
Behind it - all words, all sentences, thoughts and stories - all muddled up.
Behind that first release, behind that hardening - frozen, withdrawn - all that I must say.
Behind that winter.
Behind that hesitation - all hesitation, all action.
Behind that stillness - all movement.
Behind that quiet - voices and echoes, his, hers and mine.
Behind that shadow - all light, everything.


And when it breaks,
Will it be a trickle of coherence
That brings all understanding, all forgiveness?
Or will it be an incomprehensible grunt?

Sharing a room with cockroaches - and the thing is they stay for free!

We were all ready to move into this house, a 1 BHK, Rs. 15,000 a month  a little too much for our meagre salaries but we thought we could still somehow get by. The 15th of September - the most awaited day in a really long time bringing with it a simple joy of settling down. We imagined such happiness around that little apartment - a simple happiness but abundant. It was this nice, cosy place with an alfresco balcony behind towering glass doors and the view - a monument of epic proportions, gracefully aging, reminiscent of a glorious past, battling with immortality. And we were to settle there in that house - somewhere between now and then - to settle between two indefinite threads of time, definitely. And we'd sit in the balcony on two low chairs, with coffee steaming from our cups kept neatly on a round, wooden table - the glass doors rendered translucent by the milky vapour rising from the coffee and from our mouths, on a still winter morning. And in that stillness, we would find our refuge, safe in our haven, looking at the greying monument as voices would come trickling up to us as if they were something distant, far away. What would they be talking about? The pleasure of voyeurism experienced from the nest of our quiet contentment! And in the evenings, as the cold ash grey of the day would give way to the amorphous gold of brilliance at its edge, we'd talk about the passing of that day - little things, trivial things that happen so that the day could happen. Such would our happiness be. Such happiness I had imagined.

But then, at the last minute, at the pinnacle of our flickering hope, things took a sharp turn.

Of Longing

I

In this town
People die around 10 o’clock.

The sky is vast
With a swelling nothing
Between earth and heaven,

A gravedigger wanders
For voices,

Inside tombs
Ghosts recollect life
In whispers.

II

I penetrate this night
Into unending streets

Lit by lamps lighting
Shadow; a throbbing orb
Entrapping me

From another;
Widening shadows in between,

There,
In night’s deepest slumber
A star flickered.

Of Children

I was alone at my place, when there was a knock at the door. Immediately it dawned on me that suddenly I had this encumbering and needless responsibility of entertaining this unknown person lurking behind the door as there was no one in the house. ‘Come in’, I said, although I didn’t mean it and there she stood - my cousin sister, peering in through the half open door. I faked a smile and forced a cheerful ‘hello’ which upset my vocal cord. I cleared my throat. She reciprocated in a similar manner largely ignorant of my discomfort and distress. And then there was the silence – that awkwardness which starves for immediate remedy. Being the elder person in the arena, I managed some questions in order to end my discomfiture. I was least interested in the answers. Yet, with the aid of some superhuman abilities, I deciphered that she was in the fourth standard. I asked the young girl to sit down and asked her if she’d like to eat or drink something. In other words I became hospitable, hankering onto every demand she would make in order to save myself from the awkwardness looming in the room! 

Now, the thing is, I don’t like kids. I know, this is an impatient conclusion and a gross over generalisation and it reveals more about me than about them, but, I can’t help it. It’s not that I hate them – no, that would be saying too much, unnecessarily. I guess they are fine in the parks, playing ball or with their dolls, with their whole scaled down He-Man family or whatever it is that they play with these days. They are bearable when they are under strict adult supervision and then sometimes, during these exceptional occasions they might seem adorable, cherubic even, that is, from a safe distance of about a hundred metres. However, if you ask me, I am fine without them.

The Invasion

When you brought the outsider 
To the quiet of this hill, 
His loud mannerisms 
And his erudite conversations 
Drowned the nightingale song 
And the sky was suffused with the flutter of wings 
In diaspora. 

With heavy steps 
He walks now 
Ascending 
The summit of our secret 
Where a flower grows - 
A wildflower 
Among the wilderness, 
A dull flower 
Wet with dew, 
A pallid white spot 
Among the green, 
A nameless flower 
Ashamed now 
Of being there - 
A native embarrassment 
Under a foreign gaze, 
It quietly broods. 
It is to be uprooted now 
Or will it be trampled upon? 

And as the sun settles 
In the heart of the sky, 
The monkey 
Swings from branch 
To branch 
Escaping the poacher's gun. 
A shot, 
Lightning, 
An unheard thunder 
In this quietness. 
And this fear is unknown 
And this fear is deep 
And settles 
Under the stones 
Of running streams. 
The ape, 
Misses a branch now, 
Comes crashing down. 
Crimson blossoms 
Are gently shed. 

The sky, 
Now drenched in blood, 
Is a memory 
Of what has been 
As a crow laments, 
Somewhere, 
At regular intervals, 
Lost in thought. 
A bee still lingers 
In the scent of a flower, 
Humming a tune 
In drunkenness 
Oblivious that night is near. 
And the flower 
Folds its petals close 
In an embrace 
As a cold breeze gently 
Ruffles its bare limbs. 

Night has seeped in 
Slowly, secretly, 
In the throat of a frog now, 
Now in the murmur of streams. 

And as I sojourn here 
In this last tranquility, 
Floating with fireflies, 
Now bright, now dim, 
Now dimmer, 
I see the blinding approach 
Of a torchlight. 
___